Saddam in Hell

While the bureaucrat who videotaped Saddam’s execution thought he was relatively humble and afraid, I suspect John F. Burns’s description of Saddam’s pride is probably the greater truth about the tyrant. His reflections are fascinating, especially the degree to which even during his trial he kept his companions (who were also on trial) in abject fear. Also noteworthy is the incredulous reaction Iraqis had for the pity and other Western journalists had for Saddam during moments of his trial:

That I could feel pity for him struck the Iraqis with whom I talked as evidence of a profound moral corruption. I came to understand how a Westerner used to the civilities of democracy and due process — even a reporter who thought he grasped the depths of Saddam’s depravity — fell short of the Iraqis’ sense, forged by years of brutality, of the power of his unmitigated evil.

That says quite a bit about the kind of coverage the Western media has provided us. But that’s for another day.

Today one can reflect on the enormity of Saddam’s crime and perhaps his punishment. The obvious place to look is Canto XII of Dante’s Inferno, where we read about the tyrants getting boiled in blood, an echo of their own crimes against their peoples. There, rage drives the Minotaur to devour himself.

But perhaps Canto XIV, where Dante meets the blasphemers against God, is more appropriate. There, he sees one of the Theban kings, Capaneus: “that huge one who doesn’t seem to mind/ the fire, but lies and twists his face for spite,/ so that the rains [of fire] don’t seem to ripen him.” In defiance Capaneus rages, and Virgil address him: “Your pride has not cooled off, O Capaneus,/ And in that you are punished all the more!/ No other torture than your own mad rage/ would bring fury its most fitting pain.”

And so they turned and went their way, leaving Capaneus and Saddam to their punishment.